When Carmen and I moved to London in 2008 we arrived in the middle of a snowstorm, and just as the Global Financial Crisis slammed the door shut for professional work.
You could say we timed it poorly.
We had left good jobs as journalists in Australia to try our luck in London and the sudden evaporation of opportunity was tough to swallow.
But we found we were made of sterner stuff. Refusing to give in, we got whatever gigs we could to keep the bills paid and the return tickets unclipped.
It was tough at first. Carmen worked in a greasy spoon café and as a shoe shiner while I sold newspapers outside Tube stations – lots of work for not many pounds.
A few months in, we got slightly better-paying jobs when we both auditioned for work in a call centre raising money for UK charities.
The power of persistence in cold calling
“It’s a numbers game,” one of the bosses told us on our first day. “Keep dialling.”
It was as dreadful as that sounds – cold calling people to ask them for money.
But it taught us a very valuable lesson in persistence: that if you call 100 people, 90 will say no, and ten will say yes, especially if you put your best effort into every pitch you make.
Soon enough I got a job at Al Jazeera TV, and Carmen went to work at Southerly, a leading marketing Agency.
And while the dullness of the cold calling became a swiftly fading memory, we have never forgotten that lesson in persistence it taught us.
In fact, we have used it quite recently…
How we made Write Your Novel a success
I recently launched an online writing course called Write Your Novel with nine students taking part in the first run of the program.
I’m really proud of that number, and not just because a small and dedicated group of students is what we aimed to create.
I’m proud because 9 represents a more than 25% conversion rate. It demonstrated the power of persistence in action.
In the lead-up to launching the course, I held a series of free writing workshops online called Map Your Novel, partly as a challenge to myself to see if I could do it, and to show people who were potentially in the course what it would be like.
More than 70 people signed up for the events. Then on each of the three nights, an average of 35 turned up. And when the course launched, 9 signed up – and I was stoked to have each person in the group.
What blew me away about this process was that it was a reminder of that simple lesson I learned in the call centre – that while you will get more people saying no, if you put your best foot forward and keep going, you will find people who will say yes.
It really is a numbers game. The power of persistence can pay off.
And the number for success is smaller than you may think.
Chance to scale
It reminded me that, on average, you need to ‘touch’ customers seven times with your brand message before they say yes.
But it also made me realise that if you engage on a higher level, you can reduce these touchpoints because you make them frictionless.
For example, with my live Map Your Novel event each time I spoke to my ideal customer it was for an hour at a time.
This meant the customer engagement was high, and after just three sessions, I was able to get a 25% conversion rate.
When was the last time you connected with your customers on a deeper level?
What is your conversion rate?
Is it time to be more proactive with your messaging, sharing your story, aiding your customers and creating deeper connections?
Let me know in the comments below!
